all

Pack up the ‘wagon, we’re leaving this town
with our kids for two weeks at Nebo’s campground.

A dirt-brown Impala packed close as sardines
with two youngish children and two more preteens,

six sleeping bags, cots and a blue-striped tent
--its raising is always a stressful event.

“Let’s find the swimming pool,” begs older youth,
and finding the bottom too fast breaks a tooth.

Tennis preoccupies Father and sons
while daughters with Mother bounce, swing, slide and
run.

The day Dad turns forty, mortality looms;
he gazes toward sunset through coneflower blooms.

At night when the katydids kickstart their tune,
we see near the table bright eyes of a ‘coon.

When windy and raining, the tent starts to lean;
we move cots to center away from the screen.

Bacon and coffee, charcoal and woodsmoke—
aromas spread over each camp like a cloak.

Hiking and reading, card games, volleyball,
away from computer, TV and the mall.

Two weeks every summer till children are grown
make memoried pictures to relive alone.

Glory to You, O Lord.
I will praise Your name.
Though I’m not in the mood
To worship You today,
I will for Your glory.

I’ll praise You always
In Your everlasting kingdom,
Because Your love
Surpasses all understanding,
Even when I’m in a strange mood.

Glory to You, O Lord.
You will just have to excuse me.
I don’t feel like worshiping You.
I’m in a strange mood,
And I need to praise Your Name.

Better to wake up

as a cryptic letter with

insufficient postage than

as a giant cockroach,

I suppose.

Good to

wake up at all, some

will say; and yet perpetu-

ally now (a dream?)

I'm eyeing my own

destination and saying

excitedly to the carrier,

"Hey--look! I just need

to cross the street!

Take me there. Drop

me off, will ya?"

Heaven help me: I do

make it, but not before

the postal truck

takes me several miles

in the wrong direction

for another night

of existential anguish

in a local distribution

bin: usually "return

to sender" before it all

gets worked out. And

even then, no one quite

understands me.

Better

to wake up as a cryptic

letter with insufficient

postage than as a giant

cockroach, I suppose.

Will she be the first Madame President?

THE GREAT WALL-FENCE

Pat Durmon

Our neighbor spoke of his plan to which

he was plainly yoked: to build a tall, wooden fence—

It’ll separate our dogs from your puppies, he’d said.

My heart sank, and I felt doomed like a stranger

without voice. His words clanged and clattered

inside my head which knew he had every right.

I pictured how a fence would silently tower

over the forsythias and hide the white faces

of the Queen Anne’s lace. No longer would I catch whiffs

of the conifer pines while tending my flowers. Only I
knew

how that view had renewed me like neighing horses and
bounding

puppies. When poems just won’t come my way, I lean

in my doorway and feast on stands of green. But today,

men came with long boards and started hammering a solid

barrier, unlike barbed wire which does not prick the eye.

I could hear the moans and groans of the saw.

Later, I stood stock-still as I looked about, toward the
south.

And there it was: the beginnings of the great wall-fence.

And now, I am shut-in, shut-out, shut-down.

You and the pups silently sit with me this evening

on the porch while I look up, face to face, into a mackerel

sky

where I see brokenness— and a face full of mercy and

grace.

Now, I must find a way to permanently place that face inside of me.

DEBAUCHERY ON THE COUCH
Laurence W. Thomas

Don’t doubt the couch potato lounging through bouts
of boxers and routs of favored teams, whose shouts
resound around the house, “Kill the coach! Douse
the umpire with a dose of his own douche!”
The paunchy slouch may grouse at his wench of a spouse
who pouts when he shouts at her to fetch him red-hots,
French-fries to munch, and a pitcher of beer to quench
his wrenching thirst. He’s not really such a grouchy
goose,
but with two outs and the game a cinch, how did that clot
of a pitcher, just off the bench, manage to botch
a pitch that would clinch the series? Ouch!

Each blade of grass upon the sun-bleached dunes,
The rose hips’ pungent smell against the salt,
The seagull’s call, the love song of the loon,
The milky clouds against the azure vault.

The wind that briskly stirs through distant pines
And sends the salt spray manes from breaking surf
Like horses running ‘long the foamy lines
With thundering hooves upon the sandy turf.

One makes a conscious effort to absorb
And harbor all that’s sensed in memory
When suddenly each thing becomes adored,
The common takes on vivid clarity.

AWAKENING
Bev Conklin

On this early summer morning
light from the slowly rising sun
slips between the trees,
sliding softly toward the ground
on shimmering shafts of fog.

No bird sings yet.
No leaf moves.

Leaving my world of dreams,
I linger where there is neither
time nor space.
I am centering,
preferring to follow the sunlight . . .

Knowing I will land with a jolt
in the mundane morning world
of--
reality?

PARENTHESIS
Gwen Eisenmann

A clearing in a forest will do.
A peculiar peace settles there.
People come, and the absence
of people noise is awesome to them
or frightening, depending on who they are.

Diane Auser Stefan: A FEATHERED FLOCK OF POETS

Diane Auser Stefan:
A FEATHERED FLOCK OF POETS